What can I do with Unassociated PSTs?

After you have understood the implications of an unassociated PST, you will probably be asking yourself, how can I find them? And then you will be wondering what your options are regarding the recovery of the PST itself.

If you have used the C2C PST management software to find the PSTs, you will now know how many PSTs you have, along with their size, the number of emails contained within them and their location.

The issue now is: what can I do with them?

If they are a current employee, then the PST needs to be associated to the user and managed that way.

If the owner has left the organization, then the answer is to comply with company policy, or perhaps the former owner's manager will have a view.

The options range from;

Deleting the PST (risky, as it may contain valuable data)

Moving the PST to a known location

Deleting any unwanted email, as this reduces the volume of emails and increases the relevancy of the data being held. This, this can be achieved by;

o Deleting emails with a certain profile (e.g. all emails containing MP3, AVI, or WMV attachments)
o Deleting mail over a certain age

Importing the PST into an archive where it can be managed.

Although it is possible to “just import” the PST, it is advisable to remove any unwanted data. This reduces the amount of work during the import AND reduces the liability on your organization through holding these unnecessary emails.